


Finders Keepers

by LadyRhiyana



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Space Pirates, Crack, F/M, Not Canon Compliant, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-22 09:53:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19665022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyRhiyana/pseuds/LadyRhiyana
Summary: “I will give you the finest horses,” she said. “I will drape you with the finest furs. Gold and plunder I will lay at your feet.”He only smiled at her, crooked and sardonic. “Gold and plunder I’ve had all my life. The finest horses and furs are already mine for the asking. What more can you offer?”**[Or, 5 times Brienne kept Jaime for herself.]





	Finders Keepers

**Author's Note:**

> Just in case, a slight warning for mild elements of dub-con in part 4.

**

**1\. DOTHRAKI BRIENNE**

**

Brienne’s braid fell to her waist and was woven with bells. It had never been cut, though many, many Dothraki men had tried and failed to defeat her; she had spent her whole life proving that she was more than a woman – she was a Dothraki blood-rider, and she would be no man’s plaything. 

As she thundered through the armies of the steel men, the lion banners burning and men screaming and running before her sword, she caught sight of the commander – a golden lord on a white horse, in red and gold armour, trying and failing to rally his men. 

She set her sights on him. 

When he refused to run, she felt a reluctant admiration for him. When he picked up a lance and charged at the Khaleesi and her great black dragon, she marveled at his reckless courage – and some part of her could not bear to see him roasted alive by dragonfire. 

She threw herself at him at the last moment, taking him down with her into the river. 

As the dragon’s great jets of fire cascaded overhead, the weight of his armour pulled him down, down into the water. She dragged him up, up, up, her lungs burning and her muscles straining against the current. Eventually with a great burst of effort she broke the surface, gasping, and dragged him to the shore. 

He lay on the riverbank, coughing and choking and gasping for air. Eventually he regained his composure, and after a moment he turned to her, bemused. 

He was golden and beautiful and he had faint lines of laughter and experience fanning out from his green, green eyes. 

She felt something deep within her coil and stir. 

** 

He said he had to return to his Sister-Queen. 

“No,” she said. 

His brows flew up, his green eyes laughing at her. “No?” he asked.

She lay the curved edge of her arakh across his throat, exerted just the slightest pressure. He lifted his chin, daring her. 

“I will give you the finest horses,” she said. “I will drape you with the finest furs. Gold and plunder I will lay at your feet.” 

He only smiled at her, crooked and sardonic. “Gold and plunder I’ve had all my life. The finest horses and furs are already mine for the asking. What more can you offer?”

She considered him. He was a great commander, a leader of men, but there was doubt and a shadow in his eyes; he was not driven by personal ambition. Perhaps – 

“No one knows you are alive,” she said slowly. “I will take you far, far away from here. We will go to the Dothraki Sea and live free beneath the stars and the sky, with nothing and no one to cage us.” 

**

**2\. HITCH-HIKER JAIME**

**

1965

The highway was vast and empty, stretching all the way to the horizon beneath the clear blue sky. Brienne pushed her ancient car to its limit, foot flat to the floor, and cranked the radio up, tapping her fingers on the wheel – 

_How does it FEEL?_ she sang at the top of her lungs, grinning wildly.* 

It felt like freedom.

** 

Gradually she became aware of a black dot on the horizon. As she drew closer she realized it was a man, walking by the side of the road. 

As he heard her car approaching he turned around and stuck out his thumb. 

Brienne briefly checked that her gun was still safely hidden in the glove compartment, and then slowed, eyeing the stranger warily. He had a guitar case on his back and carried an old, battered duffle bag, and he was wearing worn jeans and a grubby camouflage jacket.

As she drew even closer she realized that he was young, scruffy and unshaven, his hair shaggy blonde. 

“Where are you headed?” she asked the stranger as she drew up.

He looked at her, and she was struck unaware by the full force of his good looks. His eyes were green, she thought dazedly. The brightest green she’d ever seen. 

“San Francisco,” he answered her. 

“I’m headed that way myself,” she said. “Jump in.”

** 

**3\. PRINCE CONSORT JAIME**

**

When Brienne was 15 years old, she saw golden Ser Jaime Lannister raised to the Kingsguard at the tourney of Harrenhal. He was so beautiful in his snow-white cloak, his golden hair bright in the sun – her heart tumbled and fell within her, and she knew she would never forget that one shining moment. 

**

When Brienne was 16 years old, Rhaegar Targaryen stole away Lyanna Stark. Lady Lyanna’s betrothed, Robert Baratheon, descended into drink and melancholy and locked himself inside Storm’s End, raging and sullen. 

When the Mad King burned Lord Rickard Stark and his heir alive and called for Jon Arryn to deliver up Eddard Stark, it was not Robert who called his banners and made a stand. The first lord to rise against the Mad King and say “no more” was Brienne’s father, Lord Selwyn of Tarth. Not because of grief or hatred or thwarted love, nor even because of grand ambition. 

Lord Selwyn simply believed that Aerys must be stopped. 

He made alliances with houses Stark and Tully and many other like-minded lords. He was a slow, thoughtful man – lumbering, many thought – but he was persuasive and determined and he was a genius on the battlefield. 

With Brienne fighting by his side – he had tried to forbid her, but she had insisted – he won battle after battle. Finally the two great armies came face to face on the Trident. Fired up with battle, Brienne charged straight for the great black silk banner bearing the red three-headed dragon. She slew Ser Jonothor Darry and held her own against Prince Lewyn Martell. When her father and other great knights came to her aid, a gap opened up in the fighting and she spurred her horse straight towards the prince. 

There, in an epic duel that was sung of for long years afterwards, she slew Prince Rhaegar on the Trident, scattering the rubies from his breastplate into the river. 

**

After Prince Rhaegar’s death, Lord Tywin Lannister finally threw his weight behind the rebellion. He offered Lord Selwyn his beautiful daughter, Cersei, but Lord Selwyn refused.

“I’m too old for a maid of six and ten,” he told Brienne.

“Father,” Brienne said, her heart in her throat, remembering a bright, shining moment long past, “what if we were to propose a different match?”

** 

When Brienne was 17 years old, her father overthrew the Targaryen dynasty and proclaimed himself King Selwyn of House Tarth, the First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men. 

The day after the coronation, Brienne was wed to Ser Jaime Lannister.

**

**4\. SPACE PIRATE BRIENNE**

**

_Brightroar_ was the pride of the Lannister fleet. Built at the orbital shipyards at Casterly Rock, the Valyrian-class vessel was the flagship of Jaime Lannister, Lord Tywin’s golden son. 

With _Brightroar_ in the van, the Lannister fleet crushed the rebel forces at the Golden Tooth and Ashemark, sending the Stark forces fleeing in disarray. But then Robb Stark lured him into an ambush in the Whispering Woods. In the close confines of the asteroid field, the rebels’ smaller, faster, more agile ships had all the advantages over the great Lannister behemoths; soon more than half of the fleet was destroyed and the rebel ships were converging on _Brightroar_.

The first boarders onto the flagship were from the _Sapphire Isle_. After a blazing firefight and a cat and mouse chase through the corridors of the vast ship, Brienne Tarth, the notorious pirate queen, finally fought her way to the bridge to stand before the golden captain, her blaster drawn and pointed at his heart. 

“Yield,” she ordered him. 

He looked her up and down and grinned. “Gods, you really are a woman,” he marveled. “I didn’t know whether to believe the tales or not.” He advanced on her, slowly and steadily, daring her to fire, until he stood within arm’s reach, the mouth of the blaster pressed directly against his sternum. 

“Would you really shoot me?” he asked. 

She kept her gaze steady. His eyes were a bright, clear green, laughing and untrustworthy. 

“In a heartbeat,” she said. 

“No you won’t,” he said. “If you kill me, my sister will kill the Stark girls.”

“Who said anything about killing you?” she parried. 

He laughed. It lit up his entire face, made him even more handsome than ever. 

“Go on then,” he dared her. “Shoot.”

Her finger tightened on the trigger. He seized her wrist, grappling for the blaster. He was strong, and quick, and ruthless, and he almost wrested control away from her – and then she dragged him close, gripped his tunic and whipped her head forward, head-butting him – 

He crashed to the deck, blood pouring from his nose. But where other men might have cried out, cursing or weeping, the Kingslayer merely laughed. 

“You broke my nose, wench!” he said. 

“Next time I’ll break both your legs,” she promised him. 

** 

Later that night, on the _Sapphire Isle_ , she visited the holding cell in the brig. He was lying on his back, his hands linked beneath his head, but he stood up when she approached. 

The ship’s doctor had set his nose, but his eyes were slowly developing a lovely blue-black bruise; soon he would have two spectacular black eyes. 

It did not diminish his golden looks in the least. 

“If I release you from this cell, will you behave?” she asked him. 

He strolled over to the bars of the cell, considered her. “Why?” he asked. “What could Brienne the Beauty possibly want with the Kingslayer?” 

And then he reached out, cat-quick, and almost managed to grab her throat. She rocked back just in time, and just as quickly seized his wrist before he could withdraw it behind the bars. 

She squeezed his wrist, hard, giving him a taste of her full strength. “What do you think I want?” He went very still, his eyes unblinking, green and untrustworthy; she could feel the coiled strength of him. 

His lips curved up, cruel and amused. “Do you think you can take me for your own?” he asked, his voice low and drawling. 

“Yes,” she said simply. 

Beneath her fingers, the drumbeat of his pulse began to race. 

** 

The captain’s quarters were luxuriously furnished. Embroidered hangings of blue and green silk draped the great four-poster bed, which was piled high with soft cushions and barbarian furs.

Though she was not beautiful herself, Brienne loved to surround herself with beautiful things. She loved soft, sensual textures and jewelled colours. 

The Kingslayer looked golden and beautiful, sprawled against the dark furs and pale silken sheets. 

Afterwards, she knew she could not hold him forever. Not like this.

“If I let you go,” she asked, “will you come back?”

“Perhaps,” he said. “One day.”

**

Long years later, as the shifting currents of fate and fortune saw queens rise and kings fall, as allegiances turned and twisted and shifted, Jaime Lannister returned to the _Sapphire Isle_ and its notorious captain. 

He brought nothing but himself. 

“Will you let me stay?” he asked her. “Will you keep me for your own?” 

She reached out and grasped his wrist, felt the pulse leaping beneath her fingertips. 

“Yes,” she said.

** 

**5\. STRAY LION JAIME (Literally)****

**

One wild night, Brienne rescued a stray lion from the streets and brought it home with her. 

[No, seriously. An actual lion.]

It was a poor, malnourished creature. Its eyes were dull, its mane was tangled, and its coat was matted and scarred. It limped heavily on three limbs, its right front paw missing. Someone had even branded the poor beast: a mark in the shape of a crown and a seven-pointed star. 

The mark of the Kingsguard.

Brienne took it to the nearest vet. It was not nearly as simple as loading it into her car; she could not force a full-grown lion, no matter how weak and malnourished, into her backseat. She had to hold open the door and coax it in, pleading and bargaining and trying to reason with it, aware of every blink and roll of its curiously green eyes. 

Finally, with a massive, toothy yawn, it deigned to hop into her backseat and allowed her to convey it to the vet. 

** 

Afterwards, she tried to take it to the nearest animal shelter or even to the zoo, but the lion refused to cooperate with her. 

Eventually she had to take it back to her house. 

** 

As the weeks passed it slowly grew stronger and healthier, its coat glossy and golden, its mane full and magnificent. It padded around her house with regal – albeit lopsided – grace, a great, golden beast, rumbling deep in its chest, and watched her with cool, unblinking green eyes. 

In the evenings when she watched television it hopped up on the couch with her and lay its great head in her lap, rumbling and purring, arching sinuously as she slowly stroked her fingers through its mane. 

** 

She had almost gotten used to her strange housemate when Tyrion Lannister knocked on her door. 

“Brienne Tarth?” he asked, in response to her blank look. “You sent an email to the Kingsguard about a crippled lion branded with the crown and seven-pointed star?”

“Uh,” she said, “yes?” 

He stared at her with his curiously mismatched eyes: one black, and one as green as her lion’s. 

“This is going to sound very strange,” he said slowly. “Look, do you mind if I come in?”

Bemused, she invited him in and put the kettle on for tea. 

“Six months ago,” her strange guest said, “my brother Jaime disappeared. My father searched high and low until he finally found a woods-witch named Maggie, who said that she had put a curse on Jaime in order to teach him some humility.”

“What – what sort of curse?” Brienne asked, her voice trembling. She was beginning to think that she knew what was coming next. 

“She turned him into a lion,” he said baldly, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world. “Now – do you know where my brother is, Ms Tarth?”

Almost as he spoke the last words, Brienne’s lion padded regally into the kitchen and stood stock still, staring at her guest. 

“Oh gods,” Tyrion Lannister said, throwing his arms around the lion’s mane. “Jaime!”

The lion dipped its head and nudged him with its great golden muzzle. 

**

It took them three months to find a way to break the curse. 

Afterwards, Jaime decided to stay with Brienne. Every night, as they watched television, he would lay his head in Brienne’s lap and she would stroke her fingers through his golden hair.

**Author's Note:**

> * The song on the radio is "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan.
> 
> ** This piece of crack!fic - an AU of my own Stray Lion AU in "Stray Sparks" - was inspired by a comment from laurenschris86, who wanted the Brienne of that story to be followed home by an *actual* lion. I thought that was a genius idea.


End file.
